Sorry For The Absence

Phew. Its been like two weeks since my last entry. Last week I was at a writer's conference in upstate New York, and didn't really have computer access. And the week before that, I stayed off the internet to avoid receiving repeated emails and IMs from Congressman Mark Foley, who claimed he "Just wanted to chat." But now I'm back, and hopefully you've missed me a lot.

So, a recap of headlines from the past two weeks:

Republicans Protect Pedophile

Basically, Republican leadership knew about Foley, but did nothing. Then they accused ABC and "democratic operatives" of playing politics. The right thing to do, the Republicans seem to be saying, would have been for ABC to ignore evidence of Mark Foley's sexual overtures to young male pages and hope no one found out.

North Korea Shoves A Nuke Up Condasleeza Rice's Booty

Oops, we were so busy raping Iraq that we forgot about North Korea!

Yankees Blow Series, Lose Pitcher In Plane Crash

Esquire magazine publishes an awful short story with the poorly-timed title of "The Death of Derek Jeter." Um, guys, that story sucks.

Bush Learns How To Play Tic Tac Toe, Next Up? Checkers

Where the hell has he been? Nukes in North Korea? Pedophiles in Congress? It seems like Bush is nowhere to be found. Where's one of those Prime-Time-Preempting news conferences he's so fond of?

Now Today's Top Story (my version):

Mary Jane Stops G.I. Joes
General gives 'blunt' assessment of fight against Taliban

Oct 13, 2006 — OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants.

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"Yeah, we filled the inside with marijuana smoke too because like, we wanted to blend in man," said Sgt. Steven Spliff. "And I even brought some home with me in case those Talibanos come here."

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily," said Hiller. "It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices … and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

"We tried burning them with white phosphorous — it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel — it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.

"I burned em with a lighter," Spliff said. "Didn't have any problems."

Successful incinerations had their drawbacks.

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.

"Oh that was a fuckin awesome day man," Spliff said. "I ate like three bags of cheetos and then a couple of the guys pushed me around in a shopping cart. Then we listened to some Floyd and played Halo. Awesome dude. What's your name again?"